Directors cut gloom to thwart recession

Happy endings guaranteed as film-making collective vows to make us smile

It's just what we need in these straitened times: feel-good movies to send us home with a spring in our step and a song in our hearts. Film-makers in Ireland, Scotland and Denmark have teamed up to make eight films under a strict set of rules including a mandatory happy ending.

Recognising that in times of economic crisis audiences want an escape from doom and gloom, all the films produced under the initiative must end on a high note.

"The stories must make the audience laugh, make them cry and give them an uplifting ending," declares one of the rules announced at the project's unveiling at the Berlin Film Festival last week.

The scheme, called Advance Party II, is similar in origin to Dogme 95, a collective created by Danish director Lars von Trier that produced acclaimed films such as Festen. Projects filmed under the Dogme collective were bound by